Main menu

Post navigation

A Word Hug

I started blogging after being inspired by a woman from my church, the mom of my son’s friend. I noticed how she took her gift for writing and connected to people. She moved people with her words. She shared her thoughts and opinions and really put herself out there by telling pieces of her life, day by day. In revealing herself, she let people in. I wanted to do that. It looked so intriguing. And warm.

You can do a lot with words. I think about how the internet has put our children more at risk, exposed them to pain and the seedy part of life. I’ve seen the burning words of a bully and the heartbreak that was caused. I’ve also seen the disgusting things that fairly young children will instant message to each other. Vile words.

There’s a man who wrote a book of his journey with thankful words. It pulled him out of a dark place in his life, this discipline to choose to do good things with words.

I write for therapy, to process things that happen to me, or to put things together that seem the same somehow…to figure out what something means, or why this happened now. In order for writing to work for therapy, I really have to drop everything and write when the idea strikes me. I’m supposed to be writing about fungicides right now, but this is on my heart.

Life brings us extreme difficulty sometimes. My husband and I have friends from college who have dealt with extreme difficulty. With unfathomable loss. If I thought really hard I might remember how many years ago it happened. Two of their daughters were killed in a car accident. Mom was driving. I remember going to the service and seeing the two small caskets and wondering how the parents were even standing upright and talking to everyone who came to be there for them.

One of the girls had a birthday yesterday. Mom wishes the girls a happy birthday each year on Facebook…a card sent to heaven. And lots of people sign it with hugs and prayers for the family and the birthday girl. They remember with kind words.

Online today I shared an article about what to do when someone is mean to your child. The powerful part of the article was the mom teaching the child how to stand up to a bully, how to use words to heal and stop words that harm. The girl in heaven was really good at this, her mom said – as she shed yet another tear. I stopped again, wondering what I would ever do if I had to spend life in that mom’s shoes. I prayed that I’d never be taken there. And I sent that mom a word hug.